


A Very Merry Unbirthday

by yangji



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Tendershipping, i'm implying it by saying it's implied lol cause it's real subtle like, implied tendershipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21789994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yangji/pseuds/yangji
Summary: A birthday only has as much meaning as you give it. For them, it's never been anything worth celebrating, a day forgotten by others, a date he couldn't remember.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	A Very Merry Unbirthday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firetrap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetrap/gifts).



> This work is a late birthday/graduation/Christmas/thank you gift all rolled into one. I didn't know about firetrap's birthday until the day of (hence the fic's theme) and then this took me so long to write that Christmas is now coming up... but most of all, it's a thanks-for-being-so-awesome-and-encouraging when I whine about writing. Hope this is not too trope-ish given the theme and please enjoy!

Bakura didn't do birthdays. In his time, for his people, birth was not a celebrated occasion other than the relief it brought for a family that needed more hands to till the soil or another set of eyes to serve as lookout. The only birth deemed worthy of a celebration was the pharaoh’s when he came into power for it was believed that he was reborn then as a god. A rather shallow god, Bakura always thought, to celebrate something that every person had done and no one had asked for. Life was thrusted upon each and every one of them without question, so what was there to celebrate when it had been so cruel to him and his people?

That wasn't to say that Bakura didn't know about birthdays. Aside from its limited practice in Ancient Egypt, he had heard of them from the various lives he had spied on from inside the Millennium Ring. A first birthday celebration here, a coming of age ceremony there, all events that he had taken no interest in while forging his plans for revenge. When it became obvious that Ryou's body would be his last, the child his greatest ship to command in comparison to the full-grown men of the past who sank beneath the weight of his hatred, he paid a bit more attention to the boy's life so as to perform a better facsimile when situations required it. 

In those years of studying someone else's habits and preferences, Bakura learned more about Ryou than the boy knew about himself, like the idle way in which he'd watch the telephone, waiting for it to ring with the familiarity of his father's voice; or how he'd mouth the words as he read along to a good book or one of the rare letters postmarked from some far-off country. Ryou's life was dull with homework and pining for family who no longer existed, or friends that didn't really understand, and Bakura was wont to spice it up. If some bratty children would lose their souls in the process then it was just their own fault for bullying and excluding his host.

But there was very little for him to learn about birthdays because the Bakura household did not celebrate them. There were gifts in the beginning, the Ring having been one of them, but as Ryou grew older, they came a week late, then a month, and then they didn’t come at all. He was lucky to get a phone call or a letter with an apology for missing another year, a promise to do better, and he grew accustomed to not expecting them so as to avoid disappointment when they never arrived.

And once a year Ryou would light a candle, fold his hands together and close his eyes, then continue on with his day. Bakura never questioned it, only had to read Ryou’s mind for the answer, and that was all he knew about birthdays in the modern era.

So it was that he was surprised by the question that Ryou now asked him because it wasn’t something he had ever thought about, or suspected Ryou to be interested in.

“When is your birthday?”

They stared at each other from their usual positions on either sides and either ends of the kitchen table. Early hours were usually silent as they shrugged the sleep from their brains lest they prattle at each other in annoyance, neither of them morning people. Ryou was dressed and ready for work, but he always made time to eat breakfast since he would forget to dine on anything else all day otherwise, too wrapped up in his work to hear his stomach growling. It was one of the few, if not the only, good habits that Bakura had instilled in him during their shared lifetime; he couldn’t use a body about to break down from starvation.

Speaking around the spoon that funneled cereal into his mouth, Bakura shrugged his bare shoulders. “Dunno.”

Ryou quirked an eyebrow but didn’t press any further, simply slid his plate of unfinished eggs across the table, said goodbye and left. Not exactly the warmest gesture but improved from the wordless departures he used to take when Bakura first returned, unused to having anyone around to say goodbye to, unfamiliar with saying goodbye to the spirit he had carried with him for so long. It had taken them some time to fall into a routine not dependent on sharing a body and to realize that they truly were their own persons now; they stumbled over the unfamiliar physical presence of the other, bumping into each other or forgetting to knock on the bathroom door, and the emptiness that resounded in their minds with no one to answer their unvoiced ideas. Mid conversation they would sometimes forget to open their mouths to speak, turn to the other expectantly for an answer only to find, in Ryou’s case, their face patiently questionable or, in Bakura’s case, annoyed as they awaited an audible reply. Like a longtime practitioner of yoga, they trained themselves to stretch further and further to meet half way and navigate the should be normal yet odd situation of separate bodies, separate thoughts.

But breakfast in bed was unprecedented territory.

“Be careful!” Ryou warned, catching the food tray before Bakura kicked it off the edge of the bed and sent his hard work tumbling.

He finished rolling over onto his back to stare as incredulously as his sleep heavy eyes could manage, sure that he had in fact not yet woken up and was having an uncharacteristically domestic dream. Perturbed brown eyes and two slabs of steak, rare if the pink ooze smeared across the plate was to be trusted, stared back at him.

When he took too long to say anything, Ryou frowned. “Do you not want it?” He shook the tray at Bakura in emphasis.

Reaching out, he set the tray down on his lap before his brain remembered how to form words. “What’s this?”

“Steak, obviously,” Ryou said and then stood, pointing to the bedside table. “And there’s orange juice there, in case you’ve forgotten what that’s called too. When you finish, get dressed and then we can head out.” He left the room, closing the door behind him before Bakura could admonish him, or praise him, still not quite sure what to make of the situation, for being a smart ass.

No fork, not that he was complaining, and the food was good, obviously cooked by Ryou himself because he always used too much garlic salt, not that Bakura would ever let the other know. Satiated, thirst quenched, he dressed in one of the countless outfits they shared—though he’d been given his own body it was a copy of Ryou's with some character adjustments that only extended to a permanent scowl and spikier hair—and Bakura promised himself for the hundredth time in the past year to go out and buy something not so beige. He settled for the darkest pair of jeans he could find and a v-neck shirt he could imagine Ryou buying on sale but never finding the confidence to go outside his comfort zone and actually wear.

“Looks good on you,” was the only non-answer Bakura got when he finally emerged from the bedroom and then he was being pushed out the door, questions about their motives and destination ignored.

Another habit Ryou had picked up from Bakura, one that could be good or bad depending on the situation, and which Bakura just found annoying when directed at him, was the ability to pull a mean poker face. Quickly realizing he couldn't ask direct questions about their plans, Bakura took to indirect ones—"How far are we going?”, “Are we meeting anyone else?”, “Will I even like it there?”, “Why aren't you answering me properly?”—that Ryou expertly dodged—“Not far.”, “Do either of us actually have friends to meet up with?”, “I would hope so.” and a wry smile that Bakura would have slapped off anyone else’s face.

They took buses and trains, and never having taken them anywhere outside of Domino, Bakura couldn't hazard a guess to where they were headed. Not that he could concentrate on figuring out the twisting and twinning map of the subway when his body, unused to the high speed carriages of the 21st century, threatened to reacquaint him and the other passengers with his breakfast. He was forced instead to close his eyes and mentally lambast his stomach for being so weak until the jostling familiarized to rocking and he didn't realize he had fallen asleep, head lolling onto an identically boney shoulder, until Ryou tapped him on the knee to wake up in time for the next stop.

Teens posing in various styles, business men and women rushing to their next meetings, people idling at storefronts. The city was much more lively than Domino with it’s stacked businesses and bright lights, bustling bodies, and scents of delicious food and enticing perfumes that danced along currents of air. He wasn’t scared nor nervous for his first time in such a large crowd—the gathering for Duel City was nothing compared to this—but Bakura grabbed on to Ryou's elbow anyway, if not to get lost, and ignored the glance, ranging from questioning to smug, that Ryou shot over his shoulder to his clinging shadow.

“There it is!”

Following the thin finger hanging in the air, Bakura's eyes lighted upon their destination, Game Center Crown. Posters in the window boasted the newest arcade and console games; action figures of comic book heroes stood in spotlight to be ogled by school-aged children as they counted their pocket change; someone stood at the front door in a mascot uniform, head overly large and made of plastic, striking a victory pose as people walked past. Ryou tugged Bakura along, through the sliding doors and into the arcade, engulfing them in sounds of victory and defeat, cacophonous musical themes, and high-pitched lasers. Standalone arcade games took up the majority of the space but one section included rows of comic books and table top games, accessories and figurines, and tucked into a corner was a counter to order overpriced and greasy food. The thickness of fried foods and sweaty skin threatened to overwhelm the senses and was only kept at bay by the constant air blasted overhead, cold despite the chilly weather that threatened Japan at this time of year in late November.

Bakura’s head hurt—not from the smell, no, he had been subjected to worse in his long existence and it would take more than lack of deodorant to drive him away. For the second time that day he was speechless, confused by what they were doing there at noon on a Saturday morning, a mere three hours after he had finally fallen asleep, and one of only two days of the week Ryou usually slept in even if only for one hour longer than normal. The cogs of his mind grated each other from the absence of lubricating thoughts, trying and failing to determine what would warrant an outing, together, in public, having been under the assumption that Ryou didn’t want the world to know he existed, so if he ever left the house it was at night, alone and without so much as a note to tell his landlord where he was going. And as it was, he barely left their shared apartment and was all the better for it, since very little of the modern world intrigued him with its lack of magic and too many people that didn’t know the true meaning of sacrifice and hard work. What did intrigue him was not outside. 

He was suddenly aware of Ryou pressed in close to his elbow, hands around his head and face, and fussing with his hair. Pressure settled on the top of his head and something thin dug into his chin.

“Happy Birthday, Bakura.” When he looked at his not-quite-twin, something like a horn, one that had not been there moments before, stuck out of the top of his head, too colorful to be natural, fuzzy around the edges, bright shining plastic. He didn't bother reaching up to his own hair, knowing he would find a similar, if not the same, idiotic party hat. 

Bakura tried to school his face into one of abject anger that he supposed others expected of him, but he couldn’t look past the sheer absurdity of the situation he had found himself in, and the damned hat that mocked him with its domesticity. “What…” was all he managed to say as words continued to fail him.

Ryou shrugged, but the corner of his mouth twitched before unzipping into a smile so wide that it hurt Bakura's own cheeks to look at him. It was a smile they never made together, muscles weak from disuse, but he wore it naturally as though he'd kept it hidden until just the right moment, a trap card upturned to ensnare Bakura in his secret plan of fun.

“It’s been a year to the day since you've come back,” he started, and Bakura listened carefully over the laughter and music surrounding them, wondering what other surprises Ryou would reveal, “and even though we're not best friends or anything, I'm still thankful to have someone who understands… Anyway, when you said you didn't know your birthday, I thought we could celebrate you coming back as a sort of re-birthday…” His voice trailed off but he did not look away, eyes speaking the thoughts he could no longer word.

And Bakura smiled back, face sore but unannoyed by the silence because he could read Ryou's gaze as though the mind link was reconnected, knew his mind and his heart across the boundless space between their separate bodies.


End file.
